Anyone regret NOT spending more money in your younger days? (pensions, state)

[ChessieMom]

Originally Posted by Stockyman

Say you were one of the lucky ones. You avoided the three big ones, Illness, Divorce, and Unemployment. Invested wisely, lived frugally, and all your close relatives and friends are doing well enough never to ask for a handout.

But now you find yourself on a big wad of cash that's waiting to be spent but not enough time to spend it or your body is too worn and beat up to enjoy travel and other hobbies.

Anyone regret being too thrifty in your younger years? Of course hindsight is 20/20.

HAHAHAHA!! If only I knew then what I know now. SO many things I would never have spent money on...not sure it would have given me a "wad of cash" today, but certainly I would have lived much more frugally.

[jlawrence01]

Being frugal during my younger years allowed me to retire at 53 and my wife at 55. There is not a day that either one of us regrets not working until 65. Seriously.

There is one thing that I would change. In my younger days, I lived in the inner-city in "transitional neighborhoods" however you want to interpret that. I do wish that I would have spent a little more money and lived in decent areas where I did not have to deal with consumers of the illicit drug and sex trade as part of my daily routine.

[Hefe]

I actually lived pretty frugally most of my life & spent any "spare" $$$ I had on traveling, my obsession. I couldn't have cared less about cars, when I think of some of the horrible beaters I drove in my 30's ...or nice furniture, I just did garage sales & Goodwill till my 40's.

My regret is my attitude towards money - I was very anti-materialistic & truly believed that it was the "root of all evil" & so paid it very little mind, avoided it quite well actually. When I finally started to evolve more in my thinking about money I unfortunately fell into several long years of unemployment & underemployment just as I entered midlife. A very dark period... but it schooled me.

I came late, but not too late, to realize that I should've regarded money the same as I was taught to value a good education: it's a tool, something that will allow you to have options the rest of your life.

So in the last 20 years left of working life I lived relatively frugally again, still budget traveling, but a staying in decent job where I banked a very large percentage of salary each year into 401k, IRA, stocks, etc...

If I had only listened to dad & become a lawyer or something like in my 20's...

[Southern man]

I’ve experienced being broke. I’ve experienced being old. I’m glad I was thrifty during my younger life. Now I don’t have to experience being broke and old.

[evening sun]

No while I did spend a lot in my younger days , I also always saved, & added to my retirement accounts. Life is for living.

[TheShadow]

Nope. I never really had it to spend until I was in the last 5-10 years or so before my retirement. At that point I got remarried and having 2 incomes really allowed us to make sure we had no debt, and to save more. I was always frugal in my own way. I did spend money on things I needed, and may have spent more than necessary on some, but usually it was strategic, like buying more house than I needed because it would make better money in the resale. With the money I had, I lived a nice life, but not spending unnecessarily. So now that I'm retired, I'm happy to have the result of my saving to spend. I'm still always looking to save a buck, but now I'm happy to spend what I saved on this to buy some more of that.

[oldgardener]

I was thrifty when I was young, and I still am, but I'm starting to wonder why--when I die, family will get my money, and none of them actually need it. Maybe I should spend it all on beads now.

[MI-Roger]

Yeah, but the time value of money distorts how much you could have spent decades earlier. An 'extra' $100K now might mean you could have replaced that beater car one year earlier 20 years ago.

[k7baixo]

I'd like to think we achieved a pretty fair balance. We're debt-free, got a little money set aside for retirement and my wife and I are both very satisfied with our lives. If I say anymore, someone will accuse me of 'humble-bragging' so we'll let it go at that.

Maybe the real question is, "Does anyone regret spending too much over their lifetime." lol

[brightdoglover]

Think of it as preemptive sour-grapes! ... but rather the realization that I don't have a clue (as the kids say these days) as to what really animates me, what really triggers pleasure and salutary feeling of good accomplishment.[/quote]

A wise insight.

I do wonder when people say they did or wanted "what 'they' said you should do/want", I have always wondered who this "they" was. Maybe hippiedom (the edges of it) and feminism saved me from falling into listening to "they," or maybe it just didn't compute. I can thank lifelong depressive issues for being unable to buy into anything automatic, since not much got into my head. Can't say I recommend depression as a means to one's self! I must say, that I have rambled around in every way I could think of to figure out what to do/want, and have still continued to come up shortish. Some people follow a script to unsatisfaction, some of us lack a script and sort of careen around, and are mistaken for a free spirit or something. (I know I was).

I do think that people might follow scripts/spend foolishly in what they think will be satisfying. Maybe it is satisfying, I don't know. But they seem to stop when the satisfaction runs out of gas.